Carrion (The Bren Watts Diaries #1)

Chapter 60

Greenville was a small town of about three thousand, mostly of large swathes of farmlands and a single downtown road, surrounded by suburbia. Its small downtown strip was in tatters and heavily looted from its drugstores, two diners, its courthouse, boutique shops, and its single grocery store.

The vectors within numbered by the dozens.

I had Payne take a good, long look at the town's horizon via the binoculars, the burning buildings of a couple of farmhouses, the few distant screams, the strewn mangled bodies on the streets, and the guttural cries of the infected below the hill.

"What was that sound?" Payne mumbled. He nursed his wounded shoulder, wincing from the pain.

"Ah, that's them. The infected," Logan said.

"Wh—why did you bring me here?" He asked me, steadying his breathing, but his trembling gave him away.

"To give you some new perspective," I said.

Payne took two steps back, but Logan pushed him forward toward the guard rails overlooking the town. We were over the hill rise, standing in the middle of one of the two roads leading to the highway and Albany. If a honcho was down there, then the infected child could organize them into a vicious army.

I crossed my fingers; I wished there were no honchos below.

I caught only about three dozen roaming downtown through my binoculars. I reckoned there must be more out of sight. They were less active during the night, the darkness covering most of the movement. I thought that was interesting to note. Since there was hardly anyone to chase, the vectors stood like twitching statues, occasionally sniffing corners or checking up on the scuffle of cats marauding by their periphery.

Miguel sat on the turret behind me, watching our perimeter with the machine gun while Luke was behind the wheel. Aria had insisted on coming along, telling me how she had wanted "to see the little bitch cry." We left everyone else in the farmhouse.

Payne scoffed, shaking his head. "This won't work. Try again, dipshit."

"I haven't even started yet," I said. "Give it time."

I hadn't interrogated someone before, nor had I ever gone so far as hurting them to get what I wanted. I had always told myself only the cruelest of bullies did that, and for a time, I had considered Logan and his clique to be part of those people. I had thought Logan would step up into the plate and done it, but he had surprised me when he said he had no idea how to do it. It seemed everyone in the group had already determined that I should do the "honor" of breaking Payne. I couldn't admit that most of the interrogation tactics I had learned were from movies or and police procedurals, and I was skeptical whether they would work in real life.

What I am good at, however, was improvised the fuck out of it.

"You don't want to go down there," Payne said, trying to gaslight me. "You're the biggest idiot if you think that is a good idea. If your plan is to get me to talk by bringing me close to those things, you'll get infected. You'll die, and you'll get your friends killed."

"We can try."

"Fuck you."

"What's with the language? I'm trying to have a civil conversation."

"I'm not giving you what you want."

"You don't know what I want."

"Oh, I think I do," he said, letting out a smile with one side of his lips. "You want to get inside the walls, well, bad luck, buddy. I'm not giving you shit, so you might as well give up now, kid. I'm a soldier of the United States Army. I am not going to betray my friends."